A Practical Guide to Integrating Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS into Grant Proposals to the Global Fund

Integrating RH and HIV can greatly contribute to mitigating the AIDS pandemic by reducing unintended pregnancy; preventing perinatal transmission; expanding to more target groups; reducing gender based violence; meeting the needs of people living with HIV and providing our youth with the knowledge and services they need. Whether to integrate, how to integrate and exactly what to integrate will depend on a country's epidemiological profile, policies and program structures.Experience with implementation of integration initiatives in countries around the world shows that scale up and sustainability requires attention to policy and program operations issues. This document, with links to a range of resources, will help CCMs, civil society organizations and others developing proposals for the Global Fund that contribute to preventing HIV and mitigating the effects of the AIDS pandemic through programs that link and integrate RH and HIV/AIDS

Men as contraceptive users: Programs, outcomes and recommendations

Knowledge about reaching men as clients of family planning services in today’s programming environment is still limited. This report reviews 47 current activities, programs, and evidence that affect men’s use of contraceptive methods. The review includes three methods that men use directly, namely condoms, vasectomy, and withdrawal, and one that requires their direct cooperation, namely the Standard Days Method. Evidence comes from: a review of published and grey literature documentation of interventions focused on men as users of contraception in low- and middle-income countries; and interviews with organizations and institutions that are conducting programming and research in the area of men as users of contraceptive methods. This review and synthesis of current work, along with recommendations for further implementation science research, highlights the need to engage men as family planning users in addition to efforts to address gender-based norms and behavior that hinder family planning use

Gender considerations along the HIV treatment cascade: An evidence review with priority actions

This treatment brief provides policymakers and program implementers with evidence about the impact of gender dynamics on treatment access and adherence and the gender-related gaps in treatment research and programming. It also includes priority actions that can be taken to better address gender within treatment programming and raises questions for implementation science in order to achieve the global 90-90-90 goal. This brief draws from What Works for Women and Girls: Evidence for HIV Interventions and uses the WHO treatment cascade framework to identify and analyze major gender considerations in providing antiretroviral therapy to those living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries. It focuses on antiretroviral treatment access and adherence as well as the gender dynamics related to who gets tested and under which circumstances

Kuongeza ushahidi unaojulikana kwa kuzuia maambukizi ya Virusi vya UKIMWI (VVU) miongoni mwa wasichana na wanawake [Scaling up evidence-informed HIV prevention for adolescent girls and young women]

This brief offers priority interventions for programmers based on evidence from successful programming for women and girls; though a number of the interventions listed also benefit men and boys. The brief is divided into three parts: evidence-informed priority areas for programming; implementation and research gaps that must be addressed; and considerations for scaling up successful programming for girls and young women. The interventions described here are based on a thorough review of global evidence; however, each country and community response must be tailored to meet the specific opportunities and challenges faced locally

Aquilegia, Vol. 26 No. 3, May-June 2002: Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1093/thumbnail.jp

Effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent or respond to female genital mutilation: A review of evidence

Girls are one-third less likely to be subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) today than 30 years ago. However, rapid population growth in some of the world’s poorest countries, where FGM persists, threatens to roll back progress. In 2020 alone, an estimated 4.1 million girls were at risk of being subjected to FGM. Without concerted and accelerated actions to end the practice, an estimated 68 million additional girls will have been subjected to FGM by 2030. Despite intensified global research efforts to inform strategies to address FGM, there has been little synergy between evidence generation and the implementation of programs and policies designed to end the practice. As the final decade of acceleration toward zero new cases of FGM by 2030 begins, increasing the rigor of research for programming, policy development, and resource allocation is critical. This report synthesized and assessed the quality and strength of existing evidence on FGM interventions reported between 2008 and 2020. Study findings will contribute to strengthening the synergy between evidence generation and FGM programs and inform a global research agenda for FGM

Creating a culture of evidence use: Using an innovative knowledge translation platform to inform HIV/AIDS programming for women and girls

Given that moving evidence from a study to policy, programs, and practice can often take a decade or more, what is the best way to get evidence into the hands of those developing policies and programs to speed its use? Enhancing the use of evidence in policies and programs through an innovative web-based knowledge platform, What Works for Women: Evidence for HIV/AIDS Interventions, resulted in major changes in National Strategic HIV Plans plus Concept Notes submitted to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 14 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This paper documents how components of the platform resulted in demonstrable changes in HIV programming for women and girls, as a key resource for the top institutions in the HIV pandemic: PEPFAR, Global Fund, UNAIDS, and civil society organizations. This document presents lessons learned from the creation and dissemination of this knowledge platform that may be useful for many other potential applications to increasing evidence-informed, gender-responsive policies

Toll-6 and Toll-7 function as neurotrophin receptors in the Drosophila melanogaster CNS

Neurotrophin receptors corresponding to vertebrate Trk, p75(NTR) or Sortilin have not been identified in Drosophila, thus it is unknown how neurotrophism may be implemented in insects. Two Drosophila neurotrophins, DNT1 and DNT2, have nervous system functions, but their receptors are unknown. The Toll receptor superfamily has ancient evolutionary origins and a universal function in innate immunity. Here we show that Toll paralogues unrelated to the mammalian neurotrophin receptors function as neurotrophin receptors in fruit-flies. Toll-6 and Toll-7 are expressed in the central nervous system throughout development, and regulate locomotion, motoraxon targeting and neuronal survival. DNT1 and 2 interact genetically with Toll-6 and 7, bind to Toll-7 and 6 promiscuously, and are distributed in vivo in complementary or overlapping domains. We conclude that in fruit-flies, Tolls are not only involved in development and immunity but also in neurotrophism, revealing an unforeseen relationship between the neurotrophin and Toll protein families

Kek-6: A truncated-Trk-like receptor for Drosophila neurotrophin 2 regulates structural synaptic plasticity.

Neurotrophism, structural plasticity, learning and long-term memory in mammals critically depend on neurotrophins binding Trk receptors to activate tyrosine kinase (TyrK) signaling, but Drosophila lacks full-length Trks, raising the question of how these processes occur in the fly. Paradoxically, truncated Trk isoforms lacking the TyrK predominate in the adult human brain, but whether they have neuronal functions independently of full-length Trks is unknown. Drosophila has TyrK-less Trk-family receptors, encoded by the kekkon (kek) genes, suggesting that evolutionarily conserved functions for this receptor class may exist. Here, we asked whether Keks function together with Drosophila neurotrophins (DNTs) at the larval glutamatergic neuromuscular junction (NMJ). We tested the eleven LRR and Ig-containing (LIG) proteins encoded in the Drosophila genome for expression in the central nervous system (CNS) and potential interaction with DNTs. Kek-6 is expressed in the CNS, interacts genetically with DNTs and can bind DNT2 in signaling assays and co-immunoprecipitations. Ligand binding is promiscuous, as Kek-6 can also bind DNT1, and Kek-2 and Kek-5 can also bind DNT2. In vivo, Kek-6 is found presynaptically in motoneurons, and DNT2 is produced by the muscle to function as a retrograde factor at the NMJ. Kek-6 and DNT2 regulate NMJ growth and synaptic structure. Evidence indicates that Kek-6 does not antagonise the alternative DNT2 receptor Toll-6. Instead, Kek-6 and Toll-6 interact physically, and together regulate structural synaptic plasticity and homeostasis. Using pull-down assays, we identified and validated CaMKII and VAP33A as intracellular partners of Kek-6, and show that they regulate NMJ growth and active zone formation downstream of DNT2 and Kek-6. The synaptic functions of Kek-6 could be evolutionarily conserved. This raises the intriguing possibility that a novel mechanism of structural synaptic plasticity involving truncated Trk-family receptors independently of TyrK signaling may also operate in the human brain